more communities

Posts Tagged ‘Starcraft2’

DATELINE TARSONIS SECTOR… no, wait. I made that joke once before and no one thought it was funny. Let’s skip that and boil down to the TSL. For those of you who aren’t giant Brood War nerds who dream about watching MenSol[ZerO] from an Opera balcony in a tuxedo, you’re probably unfamiliar with the history of the TSL. Back in the dark ages of Brood War, if you wanted to be a professional StarCraft player, but didn’t want to transplant yourself to Seoul, there weren’t many options available to you. These days, a $30,000 tournament doesn’t seem to turn heads, but once upon a time you were lucky to find a $200 tournament. WCG, was the only place for American StarCraft players to compete. Many of the big names today were once WCG medalists (Day9, Artosis, Idra, iNcontroL). But WCG wasn’t that often, and the tournaments were small. So a small group of gamers, under the name TeamLiquid, started up their own tournament and even managed to land Razer as their backer. For North American Progamers, this was a landmark moment. more »

Let me start by saying I am not a “pro-caster.” I don’t cast professional Starcraft matches and I am not qualified to. To be a good pro-caster, you need to have a good feel for what it is people want to see, know what’s going on, and to do it in real time. When you see Tasteless on GomTV, or Day9 run the King of the Beta, you know instantly these guys could be sportscasters for baseball just as easily as Starcraft. They know what’s going on and how to bring that to the audience. One of the things that has irked me about the release of Starcraft 2 is the number of people springing up to claim to be “pro-casters,” when they really don’t have the experience or skills to pull it off.